4 ms·
The amazing thing is that this is news. Of course competitors can trash your organic rankings -- and it's a lot easier for them to trash you than it is to prom
by DanielBMarkham 13y ago
The amazing thing is that this is news.
Of course competitors can trash your organic rankings -- and it's a lot easier for them to trash you than it is to promote themselves.
I'm glad Google is slowly coming around to admitting that this house of mirrors has some flaws. The more information publishers get about this, the better choices we can make in content selection.
- alan_cx 13y agoA confirmation of fact is less relevant than peoples assumptions? What you seem to be suggesting is that information that people cannot be 100% sure of is perfectly valid, and reasonable to base decisions on. But, when that information is confirmed to be true, that has not enough value to report. I simply do not understand or accept that way of thinking.
- btilly 13y agoWhat is news here is not that negative SEO exists. It is that Google has been forced to admit that it is a real issue. Edit: After reading the comments at the end of the story, magicalist is right. The story is wrong, Google made this change a lot longer than a week ago, it isn't actually news.
- magicalist 13y ago...10 years ago.
- btilly 13y agoNo, last week. So it really is news. That's when their help page went from saying, "There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index." to "Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index." In other words from saying, "Don't worry about it" to "We're on it".
- magicalist 13y agoNo, go read the comments. The first change was made 10 years ago; the change you're referring to apparently happened sometime between March and April 2012[1]. Moreover, there's absolutely no information about how you could penalize someone's site. The article's speculation is exactly that. Honestly, if it were as easy as buying a bunch of spam links to a site for $20 and get them penalized or delisted, there would have already been a host of exposés showing exactly that. There are a lot of motivated SEOs out there, chomping at the bit to show that their personal Google conspiracy theory is correct. [1] http://www.seroundtable.com/google-can-competitors-harm-me-15210.html http://www.seroundtable.com/google-can-competitors-harm-me-1...
- btilly 13y agoOops, I was believing what the article said. You're right, the comments are worth reading in this case. That said, I have not experimented either way. But I've known enough people who accidentally hurt their own ratings that I don't see why it wouldn't be easy to hurt someone else's.
- arbuge 13y agoSomebody posted a link to a detailed expose' on HN a few weeks ago detailing a successful negative SEO campaign to destroy a competing car dealer's rankings. I'll see if I can dig it up, but this kind of stuff is definitely going on - and people are specifically being paid to do it.
- dbarlett 13y agoI think it was http://trafficplanet.com/topic/2372-successful-negative-seo-case-study/ http://trafficplanet.com/topic/2372-successful-negative-seo-... (Comment by trevin https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5701104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5701104)
- arbuge 13y agoYes, that's it. Thanks.
- paul_f 13y agoWho cares if it is new or not. It's a problem, and becoming a bigger one.
- danielweber 13y agoJoe jobs are old enough to drive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job